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It is necessary, in the first place, to define the date of their evidence with greater precision, and, in the second, to consider its bearing. But there is no reason why there should not be a kind of historic present, just as we might say, 'The Atomists, of whom are Leucippus and Democritus, hold' &c., or 'St. Peter says this, St.
Nor could atoms set in motion produce a planned or intelligent universe, as the Atomists falsely say. There must be an intelligent power controlling the atoms and contemplating the result to be attained. The view put forth by the Sankhya philosophers, that an external and internal world exists in mutual independence, is contrary to thought and experience is, in fact, unthinkable.
Modern definition of Motion. Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endeavoured to throw off the jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better succeeded in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any otherwise. The atomists, who define motion to be 'a passage from one place to another, what do they more than put one synonymous word for another?
That this influence is not an imaginary one may be seen especially in the instance already quoted from Lactantius, whose use of the theistic argument is called forth by the cavils of Sceptics and atheistic atomists. But there was also a positive influence at work to facilitate the use of the theistic argument by the Western Fathers in the prevalence at Rome of Stoic and Epicurean doctrine.
He uses the thoughts and almost the words of Parmenides when he discourses of being and of essence, adopting from old religion into philosophy the conception of God, and from the Megarians the IDEA of good. He agrees with Empedocles and the Atomists in attributing the greater differences of kinds to the figures of the elements and their movements into and out of one another.
The distinction between qualities of the first and second order first advanced by the ancient atomists, revived by Galileo and Descartes on the threshold of the modern period, retained by Locke, and still customary in the natural science of the day forms an important link in the transition from the popular view of all sense-qualities as properties of things in themselves to Kant's position, that spatial and temporal qualities also belong to phenomena alone, and are based merely on man's subjective mode of apprehension, while the real properties of things in themselves are unknowable.
The atomists are right when they postulate for the explanation of phenomenal bodies simple, indivisible, eternal units, for every composite consists of simple parts.
The Greek Atomists called it an "Inconceivable Necessity;" Anaxagoras, "The World-forming Intelligence;" Hegel, "Absolute Idea;" Spinoza, "Absolute Substance;" Schopenhauer, "Unconscious Will." Spencer finds only "The Unknowable;" Darwin's virtual Creator is "Natural Selection;" Matthew Arnold recognize a "Stream of Tendency not our own which makes for righteousness."
It may be indeed that there have been Atomists who would be inclined to teach dogmas like those of the Averroists, if circumstances so permitted: but this abuse cannot harm such good as there is in Corpuscular philosophy, which can very well be combined with all that is sound in Plato and in Aristotle, and bring them both into harmony with true theology.
4 I know not whether I may not on this occasion add, that Colour is so far from being an Inherent quality of the object in the sense that is wont to be declar'd by the Schools, or even in the sense of some Modern Atomists, that, if we consider the matter more attentively, we shall see cause to suspect, if not to conclude, that though Light do more immediately affect the organ of sight, than do the bodies that send it thither, yet Light it self produces the sensation of a Colour, but as it produces such a determinate kind of local motion in some part of the brain; which, though it happen most commonly from the motion whereinto the slender strings of the Retina are put, by the appulse of Light, yet if the like motion happen to be produc'd by any other cause, wherein the Light concurrs not at all, a man shall think he sees the same Colour.
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